Through sorting recovery, the municipal solid waste can be separated into these materials, such as paper, plastic, fabric and other light combustible substance; scrap iron, steel wire, cooper, aluminum and other metal materials; glass, non-metallic materials and other inorganic substance. The sorting technology and its comprehensive comparison and applications are shown as follow:
| Sorting technology | Sorting materials | Pretreatment requirement | Applications |
| Manual sorting | Waste paper, steel, non-ferrous metals, wood, etc. | No | Commercial, industrial and household waste collection station seized crepe paper, high-quality paper, metal, wood, etc. |
| Screening | Glass, aggregate | No pretreatment or crushing or sorting | Sort glass or access to different sizes of materials from the heavy components |
| Wind election | Waste paper, crepe paper and other combustible materials | No | The separation of combustible materials in light components and metal, glass and other materials in heavy components
|
| Heavy medium sorting | Aluminum and other non-ferrous metals | Crush, wind election | Separate a variety of metals by adjusting the density of heavy medium |
| Flotation | Inorganic useful components | Crush, pulp | Separation of small and useful components |
| Magnetic sorting | Iron metal | Crush, wind election | Sorting for large-scale industrial waste and municipal solid waste |
| Electrostatic sorting | Glass, fly ash, etc. | Crushing, wind selection, screening | Sorting of lead and glass wastes or sorting of coal from fly ash |
| Photoelectric sorting | Glass | Crush, wind election | Sorting glass from opaque waste or sorting hard glass from stained glass |
In order to economically and effectively recover the useful substance in waste, two or more sorting units are often combined into an organic sorting recovery process system. The useful substance that have been sorted out can be used for resource utilization, such as:
1. Waste plastic, tires, rubber, medical waste, oil sludge: can be recycled by waste pyrolysis plant to make oil, carbon black and other useful resources. Moreover, the plastic can be make plastic granules by plastic recycling machine; tires and plastic can be used to make rubber powder by rubber powder machine.
2. The fuel oil generated from pyrolysis equipment can be converted into diesel oil by oil distillation plant.
3. Rice husk, sewage sludge, wood, sawdust, coconut shell, palm shell, straw, bamboo and other biomass waste: making charcoal by biomass pyrolysis plant.
4. The charcoal produced by carbonation machine can be further processed into high-quality N220, N330 carbon by BMF carbon black processing plant for wider applications.
